From de-hyphenation to dual-hyphenation

Whether valid or not, the Obama administration and the rest of the world see a link between Afghanistan and the India-Pakistan relationship. This is a problem New Delhi must address.

30 March 2009
The Hindu

From de-hyphenation to dual-hyphenation

Siddharth Varadarajan

Just as they were celebrating the end of their own hyphenation with Pakistan and the rise of a new geolexical construct, ‘Af-Pak’, Indian policymakers find themselves staring down the barrel of ‘dual hyphenation’ – the link the Obama administration is making between the ongoing military instability on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the unsettled relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad.

The Line of Control may no longer be the “world’s most dangerous place” but President Barack Obama’s remarks about the need to “lessen tensions between two nuclear-armed nations that too often teeter on the edge of escalation and confrontation” make it clear that the United States sees the lack of durable peace along the LoC as a significant distraction from the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The issue is not marginal but central to the American assessment of the region and it is not surprising that Mr. Obama brought it up during the unveiling of his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the U.S. to win its war, Islamabad’s cooperation is essential, he said. And for that to happen, “Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders”. In the president’s words, “the government's ability to destroy these safe havens is tied to its own strength and security”. The first constraint would be addressed by infusions of American cash -- $1.5 billion per annum for five years – plus assistance from the IMF, the World Bank and U.S. allies. And the second constraint – security – by the pursuit of “constructive diplomacy with both India and Pakistan”. The same idea is implicitly reflected in the White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group's Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, where it says, under the sub-head of measures to strengthen the capacity of the Pakistani government, that Washington should work with international partners to foster “productive political dialogue”.

The dual hyphenation thesis was propounded again by National Security Adviser James Jones at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, DC on March 27 when he told reporters that although the U.S. did not intend to get involved in the Kashmir issue “we do intend to help both countries have a – build more trust and confidence so that Pakistan can address the issues that it confronts on the western side of the nation”. He was careful to describe Kashmir as “a separate issue” but added: “We think that the times are so serious that we need to build the trust and confidence in the region, so that nations can do what they need to do in order to defeat the threat [posed by terrorism]”. Speaking separately to CNN the same day, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, also emphasised the importance of the “regional approach” involving India that President Obama envisaged.

If dual hyphenation is a bitter pill for the Indian establishment to swallow, there are elements of the new strategy which might also provide it comfort.

For one, the emphasis on accountability on the Pakistani side for the enhanced aid being promised. In the same interview, Admiral Mullen was blunt about the ongoing nature of the ISI’s relationship with terrorist elements in Afghanistan. Asked whether there are still “elements in the Pakistani intelligence … who are sympathetic or, even worse, actually supporting the Taliban and/or al Qaeda”, America’s senior-most military officer replied: “There are certainly indications that that's the case. And fundamentally that's one of the things that has to change”.

Secondly, the emphasis in the Obama doctrine on a regional approach involving Russia, India, China, Iran and other regional players will be seen by New Delhi as timely and essential. But how seriously Washington intends to pursue this tack is a different matter. There is, for example, a huge gulf between the new Afghan-centric opening towards Iran and the general policy of pressure and sanctions that the U.S. shows no signs of abandoning on the nuclear front. And a lot will depend on how successfully the Obama team is able to “reset” America’s relations with Russia across the range of issues which separated the two countries during the Bush years.

Thirdly, both President Obama as well as his senior advisers have clarified what they mean by seeking to strike deals with extremist elements ranged against the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan. Over the past few weeks, considerable confusion had been spread by the meaningless debate over “good” and “bad” Taliban. The strategy that has now been unveiled will combine a relentless campaign against al-Qaida and Mullah Omar and other “ideologically committed” Taliban leaders with flexibility towards those who might be induced to surrender their arms in exchange for money or other inducements. Where this leaves the Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbeddin Hekmatyar is not clear, however. The U.S. has also said it will not conciliate with “mediaeval” policies towards women and human rights, a stand that would appear to rule out a Swat-type deal of the kind Islamabad has struck with the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) and, by extension, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Fourthly, the emphasis on training and funding the Afghan army and police to deal with the insurgency will be welcomed across the region. However, as long as offensive operations continue to be led and executed by the U.S. in the manner it has been doing so far, the number of civilian casualties could well continue to mount. India’s contribution on the training front is already considerable and it is likely to face pressure from Washington to ramp up its commitments in this regard. However, unless there is clarity about how the overall American strategy is progressing, New Delhi is likely to be wary.

While the notion of hyphenating the situation on Pakistan’s western and eastern borders is untenable from the Indian point of view, New Delhi needs to develop a proactive approach to deal with a linkage that the rest of the world is likely to find prima facie quite reasonable. A viable diplomatic strategy would combine three elements which would aim to exploit the growing international awareness about the Pakistani military establishment’s continuing links with terrorist elements within and beyond the country’s borders.

First, South Block should emphasise the fact that considerable progress has already been made on the Kashmir front with the two sides coming to a common understanding over the broad contours of a settlement. Far from being reluctant to engage Pakistan on Kashmir, India should tell the world it is quite prepared to pick up the threads of the productive but as-yet inconclusive back-channel dialogue once a certain level of confidence in the bona fides of the Pakistani administration has been achieved.

Second, those bona fides can only be established once Islamabad demonstrates it is serious about ending all support to terrorist outfits of the kind that staged last November’s attack on Mumbai. In the interim, India should seriously consider resuming other elements of the composite dialogue, especially those focusing on trade, since any progress on that front would provide New Delhi an unambiguous gain. The resumption of dialogue would go some distance towards addressing the negative optic that Pakistan’s military has been able to exploit in the wake of the Mumbai incident.

Third, and perhaps most importantly from the perspective of Afghanistan, India should seek to engage Pakistan in a trilateral dialogue with Kabul so as to find ways of reducing Islamabad’s anxieties about Indian intentions. If Pakistan is refusing to do more to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, this is not out of fear for what might happen if it redeployed troops away from the Line of Control. Rather, it does not want to end up allowing India to strengthen itself in that country. In other words, the Obama hadministration may not be off the mark in seeing a link between ‘AfPak’ and ‘IndoPak’ but it is looking at the wrong end of the map. Regardless of whether a settlement is reached in Kashmir, the Pakistani military looks at the roads and hospitals and training that India is providing in Afghanistan as New Delhi’s cultivation of “strategic depth”. It is in the interest of India and the wider region, therefore, that this zero-sum subcontinental rivalry in Afghanistan is ended. The way to do this is not to shut down its consulates or reduce its engagement there but to perhaps invite Pakistan to jointly execute projects in that embattled nation. An India-Pakistan-Afghanistan friendship highway, for example. Or a Pakistan-India medical college in Kandahar. These are small steps. But once they are taken, they might well lead to larger political initiatives that could help to stabilize Afghanistan and allow American and other foreign forces to leave South Asia once and for all.

A familiar stench

Varun Gandhi’s bigotry against Muslims is hardwired into the DNA of the BJP and Sangh Parivar. That is why he is still his party’s candidate for the elections...




24 March 2009
The Hindu

A stench that is all too familiar

Siddharth Varadarajan

I cannot decide what is more offensive about the recent statements made by the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for Pilibhit, Varun Gandhi — the original sin of inciting religious hatred against Muslims or the cowardly dissembling when confronted with irrefutable evidence of his incendiary oratory. In the old days before television news and the internet, politicians could always deny the veracity of the printed word by claiming they had been misquoted or that their words had been taken out of context. The hapless hack might well have a recording of the offensive words but in the absence of any way to disseminate that evidence, the politician would invariably get away. Not anymore. Varun has regularly been spewing communal hate in his stump speeches. And not one but several video and audio recordings exist to prove this.

What the whole of India saw and heard in the flailing of his arms, the hysterical movement of his lips and his coarse, insistent promise to cut and kill Muslims was reality TV stripped of the comforting gauze of distance. “This is not the ‘hand’ [of the Congress], this is the hand of the lotus. It will cut the throats of Muslims after the elections,” he said, using a pejorative that plays on the fact that Muslims are circumcised. We all saw it, heard it and recognised it. That is why the Election Commission rejected Varun Gandhi’s unproven claim that the clips were somehow “doctored” and found him guilty of violating the code of electoral conduct.

That he would do everything possible to prevent himself from being debarred or even imprisoned is understandable. In Pilibhit, the Hindutva hero bravely promised to cut the throats of Muslims if elected. Back in Delhi, he whimpers that he threatened violence not on Muslims but on “vote katuas,” or spoilers, an explanation which is nonsensical because that phrase is used only to describe a minor third party which enters an election and cuts into the votes of a bigger rival.

The k-word Varun deployed is the Indian equivalent of the n-word racists in the U.S. use for African-Americans and belongs in the gutter rather than in an election speech. He also demonised Muslim names and said Hindus ought to fear encountering Muslims at night. In any democracy worth the name, a politician would be arrested and prosecuted for making such a speech. In a country where such speeches have been used to incite actual violence against Muslims, he would immediately be barred from standing for election. And even if he were able to take refuge under the labyrinthine legal process to postpone the inevitable for several months and years, his party certainly has a moral and political obligation to stop him contesting under its symbol.

In America, racism in politics has sometimes been used at the subliminal level. The Republicans used the case of a Black felon to attack Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. But were a mainstream candidate to break the taboo against using racist language, let alone threaten violence, his party would expel him before the day were out. But this is India, and the party concerned is the BJP. How can it act against Varun when all he did was to echo the anti-Muslim message that its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has been giving since its inception?

As Jyotirmaya Sharma convincingly demonstrates in Terrifying Vision: M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS and India, Muslims have always been seen by the sangh parivar as alien, violent and threatening — “incomplete, uncultured and demonic” in the words of its most important sarsanghchalak. Muslims (and Christians) were scary like rakshasas and had no loyalty to India because they did not accept their kula dharma, or ancestral duty, towards Hinduism. They were "ghar ke baaharwaley" — those who are not part of our home — and had to agree to be assimilated to the point where they no longer called themselves Ali, Hassan, John or Thomas. And if they refused, how should Hindus deal with the desecration of their motherland? “Parashuram avenged his father’s humiliation by offering him libations of blood of those who had insulted him,” Professor Sharma explains. “Likewise, the only way to worship the motherland after she had been defiled,” warns ‘Guru’ Golwalkar, “would be to wash it with the blood of those who dared commit such an act.”

The anti-Muslim construct and the threat of violence is a congenital part of the RSS’ philosophical DNA, a genetic flaw so potent that it contaminates anyone who comes into contact with it. Muslims are the enemy around which the edifice of the BJP’s wider politics is built, even if the requirements of legality mean the party has to be guarded in the manner in which it expresses itself. Sometimes, of course, the mask slips, either by carelessness or design. Varun Gandhi is a novice but even a consummate politician like Atal Bihari Vajpayee could occasionally trip up. In a venomous speech at a BJP meeting in Goa in April 2002, shortly after the anti-Muslim violence which shook Gujarat that year started, Mr. Vajpayee, who was Prime Minister at the time, declared: “Wherever Muslims live, they don’t like to live in co-existence with others, they don’t like to mingle with others; and instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats.”

Mr. Vajpayee later claimed he was speaking about “followers of militant Islam” and not Muslims in general. Subsequently, the PMO put out a doctored version of the speech in which the phrase “wherever Muslims live” was changed to “wherever such Muslims live.” There the matter would have ended, except that Mr. Vajpayee made the mistake of telling Parliament the doctored transcript was the actual speech delivered by him in Goa. Priyaranjan Das Munshi produced a recording and moved a privilege motion claiming the House had been deliberately misled. Manohar Joshi, who was Speaker at the time, exonerated Mr. Vajpayee. But in his ruling, he noted that the BJP leader had admitted the recording of his speech did not contain the word “such.”

Despite emendations and clarifications, however, the party’s DNA keeps asserting itself. On the eve of the 2007 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP officially produced and distributed a VCD, 'Bharat ki Pukar', in which a number of actors play out scenes of Muslim villainy to underline the sangh’s message that Hindus are under siege. The VCD’s hero was a school teacher (masterji) who goes around telling Hindus to act before it is too late. “If you don’t vote the BJP, you will regret it. This country will be enslaved by the Muslims and these tikas on your forehead will have to go and in their place you will have to grow beards.” His commitment to the cause eventually causes him to have a stroke and die. At his funeral, one of the mourners sounds a dire warning. “That day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindu, and you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram or Radhekrishan anywhere. Wherever we look, we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi, and Maulvi.”

From Guruji to Atalji, Masterji to Varun, the words may vary but the notion that Muslims are outsiders and enemies, that they are “scary,” have peculiar names and are plotting to turn the country into Pakistan is constant. So Varun Gandhi could warn his voters, “go to your villages and give the call that all Hindus must unite to save this area from becoming Pakistan.” His words, in their totality and in their relationship to the sangh parivar’s message, make clear what he was talking about. Regrettably, the Election Commission never took the BJP’s 2007 campaign VCD seriously. This time, however, it has not made the same mistake and has said Varun should not stand.

The BJP is upset about due process. It has also complained about double standards, since the Congress is again fielding Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, despite their more than questionable role in the November 1984 massacre of Sikhs. That the Congress should do so is shocking and condemnable but two wrongs don’t make a right. The law may allow Varun Gandhi to claim he is innocent until proven guilty but the imperatives of political judgment are different. By failing to condemn his hate speech and disregarding the Election Commission’s request that his candidature be withdrawn, the BJP and its leadership have made clear that they concur with, and are complicit in, the incitement of religious hatred as a means of winning elections.

Obama picks India critic for top nonproliferation job

In Congress, Tauscher had stridently attacked nuclear deal, India’s record....


21 March 2009
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS
Obama picks India critic for top nonproliferation job

Siddharth Varadarajan

The appointment of Ellen O. Tauscher to the Obama administration’s top nonproliferation job places a big question mark over the future implementation of the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement.

As a Democratic Congresswoman from California, Ms Tauscher was one of the most prominent critics of the Bush administration’s push to open the doors of global nuclear commerce for India. Not only did she vote against the ‘123 agreement' in the House last year but she also proposed amending the terms of the deal to make the cut-off of fissile material production by India a precondition when the Hyde Act was before Congress in 2006.

Asked for his reaction to the Tauscher appointment, a senior Indian official told The Hindu on condition of anonymity, “We work with what we get. Never write us off.” But others were less sanguine. “The non-pro people in the State Department were unhelpful but they were usually over-ruled in the Bush administration,” said another official.

“Let us see if the political people are the ones who call the shots now”.

After the Nuclear Suppliers Group waived its rules to allow trade with India last September, Ms. Tauscher called it a “dark day for global efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.” In a withering attack on the decision, she predicted that “this shortsighted step will ironically do very little for the American nuclear industry, as India will likely buy nuclear technology from Russia and other suppliers.”

In a statement on September 8, 2008, she said the deal made it harder to “curb the South Asian nuclear arms race” and undermined America’s efforts to deal with North Korea and Iran. “It’s a dangerous precedent that would be impossible to erase”, she added, vowing to try and block its passage through Congress. Earlier, in an op-ed with Mr. Markey, she described the Indian deal as a threat to international security.

And in a speech at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratories in 2007, she said the U.S. must expand its “nonproliferation programmes to secure loose nuclear material and extend them to countries of concern such as Pakistan and India.”

When she is confirmed as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Ms Tauscher will be Washington’s point person on all proliferation-related issues. She will play a key role in shaping the administration’s approach towards the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the proposed Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), the 2010 NPT Review Conference as well as evolving issues like restricting access to reprocessing and enrichment technology. These are all areas of crucial importance to policymakers in Delhi.

On the Indian front, her direct role would be limited to working the inter-agency process within the Beltway on the potentially thorny issue of finalising reprocessing arrangements and procedures for any reactors the U.S. sells to India. The Indian Department of Atomic Energy has made it clear it will not buy any American reactor until the reprocessing details are worked out to its satisfaction. And given the background of her opposition to the nuclear deal, Ms Tauscher is likely to push for terms that India may consider intrusive or undesirable.

Internationally, Ms Tauscher told the Munich Security Conference last month there were several steps that the Obama administration was likely to take on the arms control front. The FMCT was the most immediate priority she said, adding that the treaty was “not a ‘nice to have’ but a ‘have to have.’” The other priorities were penalising NPT signatories who withdrew from the treaty, ratifying the CTBT, entering into direct talks with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programmes, and restoring the ‘Spratt-Furse’ law in the U.S. banning the development of “mini-nukes.”

If the Indian strategic establishment is not entirely comfortable with the fast-tracking of FMCT talks, it is likely to derive some satisfaction from Ms Tauscher’s tough line on the disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan. “It is long past due for our Pakistani friends to give us full access to A.Q. Khan so that the world may gain a complete understanding of the damage he caused,” she told the Munich conference.

In Ms Tauscher’s view, however, India’s record on proliferation is not much better. Speaking in Congress during the ‘123’ debate last September, she described India as a “country with a dismal record of non-proliferation” which had been “denied access to the market for three decades and for good reason.”

She also joined several legislators in stating that they would not allow President Bush’s signing statement on the 123 law to dilute the requirements of American law to suit India’s concerns.

U.S. wants India to de-escalate on border with Pakistan

Escalation on the border was entirely on the Pakistani side: India ...

20 March 2009
The Hindu

U.S. wants India to de-escalate on border with Pakistan

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: South Block may have successfully fought off the initial drive to formally extend Richard Holbrooke’s ‘AfPak’ mandate to India but the Obama administration’s Special Representative for the region drew first blood last week, asking New Delhi to draw down its own troop presence on the Pakistan border so that Islamabad can beef up its presence on the Afghan front.

The request that India de-escalate its forces on the border was conveyed to Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon during the latter’s recent visit to Washington, well-placed sources said.

In response, India told the U.S. that any escalation which had taken place on the border in the wake of last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai was entirely on the Pakistani side. Mr. Holbrooke was also told that India had not deployed additional forces that could now be withdrawn to other locations.

Indian officials believe the redeployment of Pakistani troops to the Indian border in December 2008 was prompted by the military establishment’s desire to talk up the prospect of war with India and thereby divert attention from the complicity of Pakistani elements in the Mumbai incidents. The Obama administration was thus told that Pakistan’s unwillingness to revert to the pre-Mumbai troop deployment pattern had nothing to do with any increased military threat from India.

Though there has been no major redeployment of Indian troops to the border, the Army did extend the duration of its winter exercises in December, in part as a contingency for any unexpected developments.

But the situation now, say officials, is completely normal on the Indian side.

A number of American officials and analysts have made a link between tension on the India-Pakistan border and the war in Afghanistan. Last year, Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid wrote an article in Foreign Affairs proposing a grand bargain aimed at incentivising greater Pakistani contribution to the Afghan war by offering a more sustained international effort at resolving the Kashmir dispute with India in exchange. Both Mr. Rubin and Mr. Rashid have reportedly been hired as advisers by Mr. Holbrooke.

Interview: ‘Financial crisis has highlighted the importance of state, social protection’

The failure of the Washington Consensus is leading countries in Latin America to look for more progressive leaders, says Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet...








19 March 2009
The Hindu

‘The financial crisis has highlighted the importance of the state, social protection’

Siddharth Varadarajan

As an open economy highly dependent on trade, Chile was especially vulnerable to the world financial crisis. But two decades of prudent macroeconomic policies built around the twin objectives of growth and social protection have provided its people a measure of protection. On a state visit to India, Chile’s socialist President Michelle Bachelet spoke to The Hindu about the crisis and its impact, the reason for her country’s interest in expanding relations with India, and the prospects for progressive integration in South America.

When you look back at the growth in trade with India since the Preferential Trade Agreement was signed in 2006, you must have a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

The trade growth has really been spectacular. We have gone from $600 million to $2.2-2.5 billion in less than four years. And Indian companies are investing in Chile. But we could do much more. And that’s the sense of my visit here. In 1947, when the British flag came down and the Indian flag came up, the only Latin American country present here was Chile, accompanying you in that historical moment. Since then, our relations have been very good. Of course, this was mainly from the political point of view because of nonalignment. But the last decade is when Chile identified the Pacific Rim and then Asia as the most dynamic region of the world, a natural place to find new markets. We came to APEC, to the heart of Asia, and then we said this is not possible if we do not include India. So we started working we developed the PTA and right now, in our joint declaration, we intend to examine a free trade agreement. Chile has 19 different agreements with 56 countries like Canada, the EU, the U.S. and Latin American countries. In Asia, we have the PTA with India and FTAs with China, Japan, Korea. As a first step, Prime Minister Singh said we should have the goal of doubling our trade, and I think that’s perfectly possible. But if we are able to sign an agreement that could allow Indian products to come to Latin American markets through Chile, they could also — if they set up companies in our country — benefit from all the other FTAs. So it’s a win-win situation. And we hope we can advance in that direction.

You are also pushing for cooperation in new areas education, space, energy. What does Chile hope to gain from India?

Chile has advanced on a lot of fronts and we are on track to become a developed country by 2020. But in order to get there, we need to improve our capabilities. And we see India as a huge economic leader, but also an important leader in the political arena. That is why Chile has always supported India as a permanent member of the Security Council in a reformed U.N. We also see India as an example of how one could develop. Life expectancy when the British regime ended was pretty low and now it is more than 60 years. Of course, you have great challenges but you are great leaders in technology, information systems, services, and innovation. Chile has good people and land but we could do more for example taking steps regarding quality of education. We have high levels of access: 98 per cent of the population has basic studies, 92 per cent with 12 years of school, and out of every 10 students at the tertiary level, 7 are first generation students, so we are producing social mobility. And we are starting a huge programme for kindergarten, free of charge for people who have no money. But we need to improve the quality of education, because otherwise, they will have access but not equity. And we have a deficit in engineering, innovation, biotechnology. Second, we need to improve our English skills. We believe sending students abroad could also help. We are sending them to Canada, the U.S. and Australia but India is an important place to come.

Chile has been relatively insulated from the financial crisis but now the first signs of recession are appearing there too. How do you intend to weather this storm?

We are still not in recession, though the last trimester was not good. We are well protected but are feeling the crisis for two reasons. Part of our economic growth was due to high copper prices and copper demand. Because of the recession elsewhere, copper demand has slowed. And prices that were at $4 a pound are now around $1.6. Second, we already had the direct impact of the U.S. sub-prime crisis in those regions in Chile which exported 80 per cent of their timber for housing. But right now, we are sound in the sense that in the 1980s, during the military regime, we had a huge bank crisis and introduced reforms and regulation. So this time, the impact on our banks was very little. Second, we have a sound macroeconomy, and we have reserves. When copper prices were high, we created a counter-cyclical fund. We have two funds, for pension and social benefits. So when copper prices fall, we don’t want to deal with it as in the past, by cutting benefits or pensions. So even though the crisis has impacted us, we have a fiscal budget that is counter-cyclical aimed at public investment in infrastructure and housing and social protection.

In many ways, the financial crisis is also a crisis of economic theory and free market ideology.

I have to say this crisis was no surprise for us at all! Of course, our thought was not the perspective that was winning in the world we always thought the market is no god. You need markets, but healthy, sound, strong markets and you always need states to regulate. Markets won’t produce equity because it’s not their job to produce it, that’s the role of the state. So the crisis has highlighted the role of the state and the importance of public polices and the urgent need for restructuring the Bretton Woods institutions. They were probably adequate post WWII. Right now, they do not represent the real world. Important countries Brazil, India do not have the representation they should in the IMF and World Bank. We need to reform both the architecture and representation. We need to develop new strategies and polices and see how these financial institutions could respond to the actual needs of the countries.

You followed a different economic model in Chile but is there scope for rethinking some of things you did in the past, like privatisation? The Hindu recently published an article about how disastrous water privatisation has been for poor communities in your country.

In Latin America the Washington Consensus was followed because they said, if you follow these policies, you will have happy populations, you will live better. But that was not exactly the truth. May be the reforms were necessary but not sufficient. In Chile, when we recovered democracy we also inherited a very neoliberal economic model. Since then, we have been introducing many reforms, so today you have a model which brings together economic growth with social justice. We believe we do not have to make a trade off. And even though Chile will feel some impact of the crisis, we’ll be able to respond to the crisis and protect our population and demonstrate that growth can go hand in hand with social protection. Of course, there are some changes you will have to make even in this path, and this is natural.

Chile and Latin America have attracted attention around the world because of the steady march to power of progressive and left parties, the most recent being in El Salvador, and for the integration efforts being made. In this regard, how serious an initiative is the new South American union, Unasur?

The Washington Consensus was no solution so people said let us try another alternative. Most countries are looking for more progressive leaders and that explains what we see in the Latin American political arena. We have always said about Unasur and other regional organisations that in order to succeed we need to understand the unity among our diversity. We have some differences. Some believe, like Chile, in more openness, integration and FTAs, and others don’t. And others have different traditions in politics. But we have the same challenges and we all understand that only through integration can we solve our problems. Take energy. Chile has hydroelectricity, others have gas and oil, and most do not have sufficient energy supplies. But all together, we have more than sufficient energy. Then there is connectivity, not only to be in touch but to move products from the Atlantic to the Pacific and open more markets for ourselves. And last week, we inaugurated the new South American Defence Council in the domain of Unasur, something unthinkable a few years ago.

We are not thinking of a common army but of doing things together, analysing our defence policies and working for peace. If you ask me, will Unasur be strong, I think we are on that path. Probably what we need to do more of is to move from rhetoric to a concrete action plan. And that’s what I have been speaking about.

A final question, you were yourself a political prisoner during the Pinochet dictatorship. Do you think enough has been done to bring the perpetrators of human rights violations during those years to justice?

I would say we have done a lot. Most of [those] people are facing justice. But we have to do more. We have a bill in parliament that is still there, creating an institute for human rights. But what we have to do is go one step further in learning to respect each one’s diversity. Let me explain. Everyone will tell you they respect each other but we need to do more in terms of understanding that diversity enriches us. And I am talking not only politically but in terms of gender issues, [the rights of] aboriginal groups, that old and young can be as much a part of society. To understand that diversity — and also political diversity — enriches us is to be able to consolidate democracy and we continue to do that. When he was President, Ricardo Lagos set this new policy that there is no future if you do not take into consideration the past and solve it correctly. And in order to do that, you have to advance in truth, justice and reconciliation. We are today looking in a much better position as a community of Chileans. Of course we still have to deal with problems of the past. We still have to deal with passions, feelings that are there, tragedies that are there. But I think we are advancing in the right direction.

India and the Additional Protocol

The IAEA and its Board of Governors have reinforced the key principle that nuclear activities within India are not a proliferation concern... [My analysis of the Indian Additional Protocol... I will post the actual PDF text in a day or two after I finish scanning the document]


7 March 2009
The Hindu

India and the Additional Protocol

The IAEA and its Board of Governors have reinforced the key principle that nuclear activities within India are not a proliferation concern.

Siddharth Varadarajan

Virtually unnoticed by non-proliferation critics abroad, the International Atomic Energy Agency this week formally approved an Additional Protocol to the safeguards agreement whose passage last year helped set the stage for India’s re-entry into the world of nuclear commerce after nearly two decades of isolation.

Ever since it was first mooted in the mid-1990s, the Additional Protocol (AP) has been seen by the IAEA and the non-proliferation community at large as a tool to strengthen international monitoring of all nuclear activities in countries that have committed themselves to the pursuit of nuclear technology for purely peaceful purposes. Broadly speaking, the AP vastly expands the obligation of signatories to provide complete information about their nuclear programme to the Agency and allows international inspectors much greater physical access to locations within a country than an ordinary safeguards agreement.

The AP was an outgrowth of international concern over the IAEA’s failure to detect the clandestine nuclear programme that Iraq was running throughout the 1980s, all of which came to light at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. Its purpose, therefore, is to help detect undeclared nuclear activities. Though non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) are obliged to sign a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the protocol is not compulsory. The Bush administration wanted the Nuclear Suppliers Group to ban nuclear sales to countries that did not accede to the AP but failed to generate a consensus. Today, more than 80 states, including Brazil and many in Europe, have yet to ratify it.

In the foreword to the text of the model AP, circulated in 1997 as INFCIRC/540, the IAEA Director General noted that the Board of Governors had asked him to use the text “as the standard for additional protocols” with states that were party to comprehensive safeguards agreements with the Agency, that is, NNWS. Nuclear weapon states (NWS), on the other hand, could conclude protocols incorporating those measures from the model “that each NWS has identified as capable of contributing to the non-proliferation and efficiency aims of the protocol.” The Board also authorised the DG to negotiate protocols with “other states” — those like India who are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) — “that are prepared to accept measures provided for in the Model Protocol in pursuance of safeguards effectiveness and efficiency objectives.”

In an act of farsightedness, the formulation on “other states” in the foreword to INFCIRC/540 was actually introduced by the Indian delegate during the negotiations preceding its adoption. What this meant was that the IAEA Board allowed “other states” to join the NWS in cherry-picking those measures from the model text that they wanted to while negotiating their individual APs. Twelve years later, this is precisely what India has done.

In a nutshell, the Indian additional protocol limits the provision of additional information to just nuclear exports from India and grants no extra physical access to the IAEA. Thus, none of the model protocol’s burdensome reporting requirements on nuclear installations and activities, mining, reprocessing and enrichment within the country will apply. Since domestic activities have been kept entirely out of the AP’s purview, the model protocol’s provisions for intrusive ‘complementary access’ and environmental sampling have also been excluded. In its safeguards agreement, India committed itself to allowing the IAEA access to specified civilian facilities where imported nuclear fuel was being used. All the AP adds to this obligation is a commitment to provide IAEA inspectors multiple-entry visas and to allow the IAEA “free communications … including attended and unattended transmission of information generated by Agency containment and/or surveillance or measurement devices” which will already be put in place in India’s safeguarded facilities. What this means is that the IAEA will have access to real-time information generated by its on-site devices rather than physically accessing that information during a visit to a safeguarded site. Over time, it is hoped, free communications would allow the IAEA to reduce the number and intensity of its physical visits, thereby saving itself and India both time and money.

The Indian AP departs from the model protocol in a number of other ways. Two new paragraphs have been added to the preamble. The first stresses the voluntary nature of the country’s accession, recognising that India “in the exercise of its sovereign rights, is prepared to cooperate with the Agency in further development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” The second describes India as “a State with advanced nuclear technology,” the phrase New Delhi has consistently used since the July 2005 agreement to stress its status as a country with nuclear weapons outside the NPT system. Para 1(b) also introduces an explicit non-hindrance clause — that the protocol shall be implemented in such a way that it does not hamper, hinder or interfere with any activities involving the use of non-safeguarded material and equipment. All told, India has managed to reduce the AP’s intrusiveness to such an extent that it involves virtually no burden.

Less onerous

It is a tribute to the Indian negotiating team that the protocol it finalised is even less onerous than the APs of the five nuclear weapon states. The raison d’etre for protocols with the N-5 is greater transparency and efficient export monitoring. The U.S., which finally ratified its AP last January, accepted the model protocol with a catch-all “national security exclusion.” But while it will deny the IAEA information on and access to sites connected to national security, its reporting requirement is still voluminous. Though the British and French APs are similar to the American one, Russia and China limited their APs to exports, multiple-entry visas for inspectors and free communications. But these also include a reporting obligation about physical locations within the country involved in mining, fuel fabrication, enrichment and reprocessing, whenever these operations are conducted for an NNWS. India, on the other hand, is only obliged to provide export data and not any information on how these exports are manufactured. In case the IAEA seeks a clarification about the export information, the Indian AP commits India to cooperate “insofar as relevant for the purpose of safeguards in a State that has accepted comprehensive safeguards.”

Like the ‘India-specific’ safeguards agreement, the Indian Additional Protocol bears little resemblance to the standard protocols in force for NNWS. More significantly, it firmly establishes the principle that non-safeguarded nuclear activities taking place inside India are no longer of any proliferation concern to the international community. India already has nuclear weapons and the world has reconciled itself to the reality that there will be “undeclared” and unsafeguarded nuclear activities there. At the same time, the AP makes it clear that India is willing to play by global rules to ensure it never becomes an inadvertent source of proliferation to others. As a responsible state with advanced nuclear capabilities, India is likely to emerge as an exporter of nuclear technology, equipment and material to other countries. Accordingly, all the AP does is oblige New Delhi to provide the IAEA with information about its nuclear exports.

The July 18, 2005 joint statement with the United States committed India, inter alia, to concluding “an additional protocol” with the IAEA. With this step, India has now fulfilled all of the major nuclear and non-proliferation obligations it undertook at that time. How the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress will react to the text is another matter. The July 2005 agreement did not require Washington’s concurrence on the provisions of the Indian AP, though Congress insisted it would scrutinise the text. Capitol Hill’s disapproval, however, is of little consequence. Even if the bilateral ‘123 agreement’ or reprocessing procedures agreement is blocked by misplaced non-proliferationist zeal, India will remain free to buy nuclear supplies from other countries.

Reprocessing request is the first test of nuclear deal under Obama

India has put in a formal request for talks and the U.S. has till August 2010 to work out ‘arrangements and procedures’. Given the experience of Tarapur, the Indian side is unlikely to accept any ambiguity over its ability to reprocess American spent fuel in the future and failure to reach agreement will jeopardise the prospect of American reactor sales to India ...


6 March 2009
The Hindu

Reprocessing request is the first test of nuclear deal under Obama
India, U.S. have till August 2010 to work out ‘arrangements and procedures’

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: India has formally asked the United States to negotiate the “arrangements and procedures” under which American spent nuclear fuel will be reprocessed in the country, presenting the Obama administration with its first test of how committed it is to the India-U.S. nuclear agreement.

The request was made last month, senior officials told The Hindu.

Under the terms of the ‘123 agreement’ on bilateral nuclear cooperation, Washington has six months to begin consultations and one year after that to reach an understanding with Delhi. “The clock has started ticking,” an official said. “We have till the end of August 2010 to finalise an agreement.”

The 123 agreement gives India prior consent to reprocess but stipulates that this right will come into effect only when India establishes a new national facility dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards and reaches an agreement with the U.S. on “arrangements and procedures under which such reprocessing … will take place in this new facility.”

On February 3, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon wrote to Under Secretary for Political Affairs William Burns invoking this provision and asking the U.S. side to propose dates and an agenda. A similar letter was also sent from the Department of Atomic Energy to Richard Stratford, head of the State Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy and Washington’s pointman for nuclear negotiations with India.

The request is important for two reasons. First, because it will provide the first indication of how President Barack Obama intends to balance traditional American ‘non-proliferation concerns’ about reprocessing with the broader geopolitical interests underpinning the strategic partnership with India. And second, because the prospects of American companies winning a slice of the multi-billion dollar Indian market for nuclear energy depends crucially on India being satisfied that it will be able to reprocess the spent fuel which accumulates from the running of U.S.-supplied reactors.

Last January, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar explicitly told a delegation of the U.S.-India Business Council — which included many representatives of the American nuclear industry — that there would be no reactor purchases without reprocessing.

Shortly after that meeting, Ted Jones of the USIBC told the Washington Post that Dr. Kakodkar had said commercial ties could commence “only after talks about reprocessing rights are concluded.”

If the State Department’s Bureau of Non-proliferation — likely to be headed by Robert J. Einhorn — plays a role in the process of formulating reprocessing arrangements and procedures, the proposed talks could hit an early roadblock. Mr. Einhorn fiercely opposed the nuclear agreement with India ever since it was first unveiled in 2005.

At the same time, the default position bequeathed by the Bush administration is not without problems for India either. In answers to questions from Congress last year, for example, the State Department and the Bush White House said that reprocessing consent rights for India would not be permanent and could be rescinded.

Given the negative experience of Tarapur, where a vast acreage of spent fuel has accumulated following Washington’s decades-long refusal to endorse reprocessing, the DAE is unwilling to accept any future ambiguity in this regard, especially when the U.S. is looking to sell several thousand megawatts worth of reactor capacity to India.

Since Russian and French reactor exports to India come bundled with reprocessing consent, Washington’s failure to conclude an agreement on reprocessing arrangements and procedures to the DAE’s satisfaction would be tantamount to freezing U.S. vendors out a market that the U.S. itself was instrumental in reopening.

Though the 123 agreement treats the dedicated, safeguarded national facility and the reprocessing arrangements and procedures as two separate preconditions, some U.S. officials have argued in the past that India must first come up with a design of the proposed new facility before detailed consultations on reprocessing can begin.

India, however, sees no link between the two.

India believes Lashkar is behind Lahore attack

Lashkar wanted to punish Pakistani authorities for the action they took for 26/11 attacks... Additional Mumbai material to be given to Pakistan soon...

5 March 2009
The Hindu

India believes Lashkar is behind Lahore attack

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: India believes the Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind Tuesday’s commando-style attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, the motive being to punish the Pakistani authorities for the action they have taken so far against the banned outfit for its involvement in the November 26-29 terrorist incidents in Mumbai.

Highly placed sources told The Hindu on Wednesday that the LeT was reacting to the recent arrest of its leadership in the same manner that the Jaish-e-Mohammed turned against the Pakistani establishment following the crackdown on its activities after the December 2001 terrorist attack on India’s Parliament. “Then, the Jaish tried to assassinate Musharraf,” a senior official said. “This time, the Lashkar have staged their first-ever internal attack and consciously repeated the Mumbai pattern in Lahore to show what they can do and demonstrate their capacity to inflict damage within Pakistan.”
“Lost control”

Describing the LeT as a “state within a state,” the official said the group does not see itself as a creature of the Pakistani state. “And the fact is that they are no longer creatures.” Since 9/11, the official Pakistani strategy has been to go after the jihadi groups bit by bit, accommodating and protecting some, attacking others. “But today, I think they have really lost control internally.”

The sources said it would be comforting to believe someone within the Inter-Services Intelligence agency was directing all jihadi terrorist activities within and without Pakistan but this was not the case.

“There is an anarchic situation and things are out of control. And personally, I don’t think they have the answer. I don’t think there is someone in the ISI fiendishly controlling things,” the official said.

Relevant questions

Confirming that India has readied its response to the questions Pakistan had on the Mumbai dossier, the officials said the additional material Pakistani investigators wanted could be handed over by the end of this week. “Most of the questions they have asked are relevant from the investigative standpoint, and we will provide answers,” the official said, adding that India was not interested in using procedural tools like Letters Rogatory or the fact that physical evidence was now in the possession of the courts to stonewall the Pakistanis.

Asked for their assessment of how the Lahore incident could impact Pakistan’s willingness to cooperate with India on the Mumbai probe, the sources said there was unlikely to be more clarity. “Because their establishment is so fragmented internally, Lahore will have a different impact on different sections,” said the official. Each section was likely to use Lahore to confirm its existing belief.

“Those who say the LeT and others pose a threat to Pakistan too and need to be destroyed will say they have been vindicated. But those who say Pakistan will only end up inviting more trouble upon itself by acting could also say ‘we told you so’,” he added. “So you could argue it both ways.”

The Lahore attack had confirmed India’s worst fears about the state of affairs in Pakistan, the sources said. “We are in for 10 to 15 years of flexible containment. You actually need to work each of these sections separately, engaging, for example, civil society and the business community, while hardening ourselves to deal with the kind of threats emanating from the anarchic situation there.”

The sources said it was wrong to assume that whatever cooperation Pakistan had shown so far was because of American pressure. “There are parts of their hierarchy which see [what happened in Mumbai] as an actual threat even to Pakistan,” the official said, adding, however, that the more fragmented the establishment becomes, “the narrower is the interest each section seeks to defend.” Thus, President Asif Ali Zardari, who is locked in combat with Nawaz Sharif, might end up trying to reach out to the Army. And that is probably why Admiral Noman Bashir, whose immediate concern was to shift the blame for Mumbai away from the Pakistani Navy, tried to say the terrorists never used the sea route, the officials said.

Asked what additional evidence from Mumbai India was likely to hand over to Pakistan, the officials said the material being prepared included some transcripts and actual recordings of telephone conversations between the terrorists and their handlers, as well as the DNA material and more detailed GPS data requested for. But the Indian side would also be seeking additional information from Pakistan. “We are not engaging in a point-scoring exercise but are going through the Mumbai charge sheet to formulate some specific requests,” the official said. However, India was not formally asking for access at this stage to detained LeT leaders like Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi. “We do want to interrogate all of them, but we want to do this legally. That stage will come later,” he added.

IAEA Board approves Indian ‘Additional Protocol’

IAEA Board approves Indian ‘Additional Protocol’

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: India on Tuesday won formal approval for an Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency from the IAEA’s Board of Governors, thereby completing all of its major commitments stemming from the July 2005 nuclear agreement with the United States.

IAEA sources confirmed the BoG’s decision but declined to provide details of the protocol’s text pending its release for public distribution.

The sources, however, confirmed that the Indian text differed from the standard AP applicable to non-nuclear weapon states in a number of crucial aspects. The text was finalized mid-February after a total of four rounds of discussion between an Indian delegation led by the Department of Atomic Energy and the IAEA secretariat.

According to the German news agency DPA, the Indian protocol does not mention verification of nuclear imports, short-notice inspections or the IAEA's right to take chemical samples which can reveal hidden nuclear activities. All of these provisions form part of the standard template for Additional Protocols.

The first public announcement that the Indian text was ready for approval was made by IAEA Director General Mohammed el-Baradei in his address to the Board on March 2.

Of course, I will provide the text and my analysis of the Indian AP in the next day or two.

Lahore attack shows urgency of joint action on terror

Forget the conspiracies, the threat to Pakistan and India is the same ...






4 March 2009
The Hindu

Lahore attack shows urgency of joint action on terror
Forget the conspiracies, the threat to Pakistan and India is the same

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Pakistanis and Indians looking to make sense of the latest terrorist outrage in South Asia would do well to not seek outlandish explanations for the commando style attack on the Sri Lankan team when simpler ones suffice.

Media commentators in Pakistan have begun speculating that Tuesday’s shocker in Lahore was the handiwork of the Indian Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) out to avenge the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai. AFP also quoted at least one unnamed “Pakistani security official” as echoing this charge. "Our suspicion is that the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) could be behind it," he said. “We have seen tit-for-tat attacks in both countries in the 1990s and Lahore could be a reaction to what happened in Mumbai, which India blamed on us," the official added.

On the other hand, saner elements, including the Lahore police chief and the Punjab governor, have noted obvious similarities between the modus operandi of the Lahore terrorists and the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba men who struck Mumbai. The supposition is that the same group which masterminded the attack on India’s commercial capital has now targeted Lahore. Or that another group – equipped with similar capabilities, training and even motivation – has copied the Mumbai MO.

Since imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery but also of incrimination, the last thing the planners of any supposed tit-for-tat Indian attack would do is unleash armed men with backpacks in a crowded metropolis. The hallmark of an intelligence agency black operation is deniability. The fortuitous arrest of Ajmal ‘Kasab’ – who was supposed to die fighting -- helped India unravel the full extent of the Mumbai conspiracy. Against this backdrop, staging an attack with 12 assailants and “Indian” ordnance (as some Pakistani channels are speculating) would be an act of such foolishness that it is absurd to think RAW would involve itself in such a risky venture. That it would want to do so at a time when Islamabad is conceding the validity of Indian claims about the involvement of Pakistani nationals in the Mumbai conspiracy simply defies reason.

But if the theory of Indian involvement in Lahore is ridiculous, the Indian side needs to ask what Tuesday’s copycat attack reveals about the wider motivation and affiliation of the Mumbai attackers. The Mumbai incident was aimed at India, the India-Pakistan peace process and also the civilian government in Pakistan. Lahore is clearly targeted at the third objective, and can be seen, more generally, as an outgrowth of the steady inroads terrorist organizations have made in the heartland of the country. Emboldened by Islamabad’s capitulation to the Tehreek-e-Nafaaz-e-Shariati-Mohammadi and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in Swat, as well as the in-fighting within the secular parties, the jihadi groups are upping the ante. Cricket is the most visible icon of secular Pakistan, and perhaps the only competitor militant Islam faces in its struggle to tame the ‘wayward’ Pakistani mind. The intended target for the attack could well have been the Pakistani team itself, though attacking the Sri Lankan guests serves the additional goal of ensuring the demise of international cricket in the country.

Though the Mumbai chargesheet is silent on this, Indian officials have spoken on and off the record about their belief that sections of the Pakistani establishment were complicit in the November 26-29 attacks. If this is true, and if the same group is also involved in Lahore, one needs to ask what exactly these sections are trying to achieve. If the aim is merely to destabilize the government of Asif Ali Zardari and Yusuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani president and prime minister seem to be doing a wonderful job all by themselves. Given the current political turmoil within the civilian sector, the military will have ample opportunity to intervene. At any rate, it has no need to artificially accelerate the process.

A more plausible explanation could be that the complicity of these sections of the Pakistani establishment is of an implicit rather than explicit variety. Incidents like Mumbai or Lahore are not actively planned, but they occur nevertheless because the establishment does not wish decisively to act against the infrastructure of terror it helped create over the past two decades. The establishment knows some of these groups have turned inward, against their erstwhile masters, but thinks the damage they inflict can be contained. The conductor still believes he is conducting the orchestra, even though the hall is already filled with cacophony. The Swat capitulation was aimed at keeping the jihadi organisations alive because they might yet serve a purpose as force multipliers should the situation in Afghanistan change. But it was also a naive attempt to erect a temporary firewall around the heartland of Punjab, a strategy that had failed even before it was tried.

In his interrogation, Ajmal ‘Kasab’ had spoken of how the 10 men who were chosen for the Mumbai operation were part of an original group of 35 who had received similar training in urban warfare and the use of firearms. If Pakistani officials are truly concerned about the security of their country, they ought to be trying to track down the remaining 25 extremists on an urgent basis. Perhaps some of them saw action in Lahore on Tuesday. Or will be deployed against soft targets elsewhere in Pakistan or India. After Lahore, there can be no excuse for Pakistan living in denial. The enemy lies within and it has to be destroyed, root and branch.

As for India, Lahore demonstrates that the picture across the border is even more complex and dangerous than first imagined. Pakistan is to India today what Swat is to the rest of Pakistan, an unsettled, unstable buffer. And time may well be running out. In its latest report, the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think-tank, says Islamabad “has 6-12 months to put in place and implement security and economic policies or face the very real prospect of considerable domestic and political turbulence". The kind of threat terrorism poses requires a joint effort by both India and Pakistan, and not the reiteration of meaningless phrases like “all options are open”. Finding ways to encourage Pakistani cooperation and, more generally, to stabilize that country, are the most important challenges facing Indian diplomacy.